


additive sculpture

by Anonymous



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Emily Prentiss, it isnt specified but that’s how i roll, mentions of henry + the rest of the bau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27441523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “A four-leaf clover should be a nice addition to your other tattoos. You still have two, right?” —Ian Doyle to Emily Prentiss, 6x18,Valhalla.In which said tattoos are the namesEmilyandLauren, three times someone asked about them, two times Emily decided to get a tattoo, and one time she got to tell the truth.
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80
Collections: Anonymous





	additive sculpture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SloanGreyMercyDeath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SloanGreyMercyDeath/gifts).



> So this is based off a series of asks from @top-jj-rights’s tumblr last night (the links to which are in the end notes). If the title sounds dumb and pretentious, I would like you to understand that it is actually panicky-the-interim-title-for-this-was-“fuck if I know” and pretentious. 
> 
> Additive sculpture refers to the practice of sculpting by building up, rather than by carving away (subtractive).
> 
> Warnings: Emily has an anxiety attack in the fourth section, and the second section is a fairly… intimate bit between her and Doyle during the Lauren days. It’s implied that they have sex after.

Emily brought Tsia with her, when she got the tattoos. No offense was meant to the other members of her team, but given that getting them directly below her breasts meant she would have to be shirtless the whole time and exactly how obvious Clyde was about his staring sometimes, she preferred the one who she knew was only attracted to men.

It was just after the invention of Lauren Reynolds (which was just after Jeremy looked at Doyle’s girlfriends and smirked and said, “You know, Em, they kind of look like you.” Which was just after they started building a profile on Doyle, and that just after they closed their last case, and that just after—well. 

Sometimes it felt like everything Emily did was just one part of some universe-sized line of dominoes toppling down to their inevitable conclusion, like no matter how she tried to swim against the current—spike her hair, paint her face, wait tables through college—she would always be the ambassador’s daughter. Like it didn’t matter who Emily Prentiss was.)

“You’ll have to consider what Doyle will think,” Tsia warned.

Emily smirked at her, pretending confidence she didn’t feel. “His history doesn’t say ‘homophobe.’ My ex-girlfriend should be something he’ll get off on because he wants to possess me, to stake a claim.”

“True.” Her lips tightened. “So who’s on the left?”

“Emily.” It would exacerbate Doyle’s need for control and dominance, having it close to her heart. It wasn’t about him though. It was about the fact that Emily needed it there, needed to take possession of herself. 

She had spent so long figuring out who ‘herself’ was that doing this… it felt like tucking herself away to let Lauren Reynolds take her skin for a joyride. Like that was possible. Every word had to be watched, every gesture, every thought—both hers and Doyle’s. Practically just another day in the Prentiss household.

“Tell me about her,” Tsia prompted, gently, as they got on the train.

The game was simple: Emily had until they reached the tattoo parlor to tell her the story, the way Lauren would. 

She closed her eyes, and let the woman stitch together in front of her.

“She liked to fight—got us together _and_ broke us up.”

Ian snorted through his nose, soft but rough. A thin smile showed under his beard. His thumb ran over the name again, and Emily let herself shiver.

“We met in debate, just before I dropped out,” she explained. “Never could let something go.”

“A fighter, huh?” He laughed now, still restrained to the point where it was more of a vibration above her skin. His hand splayed out flat over her chest, the palm covering the name entirely and upper ridge pushing against her breast.

His skin was rough, palms strong and callused. If someone got him angry enough, he could probably smash her ribs to dust without a second thought.

His beard brushing against her stomach hid the reason for the new tension in her muscles.

His lips pressed against the scar on her sternum—Emily had tripped and fallen down a steep slope while hiking; Lauren had been pushed into an unfortunately rotting fence by her older cousin. 

Ian looked back up at her, beard still scratching at her. He was smiling gently, the expression still rough-hewn on his features. “Seems like you.”

She smirked back at him. “Maybe just my type.”

And _that_ , he took as an invitation.

There was no one to ask for a long time after Doyle. Lauren Reynolds was dead.

Except, of course, for the part where the FBI were a bunch of cheapskates who liked to room their agents together in pairs to save on room fees, and Hotch, much like the chaperone on a high school trip, divided them by gender.

So Emily got used to changing in front of JJ.

She could feel her eyes, before she asked. Was trying not to, really, because being attracted to her coworker was a terrible life choice.

Then, well, Emily made the worse one to turn just a little bit to her right and met JJ’s gaze. 

She startled, cheeks flushing and eyes widening—they were so blue that Emily could just get lost, if she let herself. The thought had her smiling awkwardly as she pulled at her sleep shirt, trying to mask the nervous energy under something as reasonable as fixing her clothes.

“Sorry.” JJ’s cheeks flushed redder, and she brought her knees up closer, one hand gripping the clearly-forgotten novel in front of her to keep it from falling. (She tended to read before bed—JJ didn’t fall asleep easily, and books were just one of many strategies. Emily had spent more night than she could count pretending to be asleep and listening to the soft rustle of pages.) 

“I, um, I just—“ Her head ducked, like she had noticed her own accent slipping out from under the Network American facade. “…Who’s Lauren?”

Or not.

Emily’s chest tightened, and the faint softness at JJ’s little tics faded in favor of anxious frustration—she hated this part, the part where she had to lie to her team, where she had to lie to her _friends_. (Where she had to lie to JJ.)

“My ex.”

She knew her discomfort was written across her face from the flickering series of expressions that crossed JJ’s—eyes widening, lips loosening and then both tightening in sympathy. 

“I, uh—“ She grimaced. “I’m sorry. For asking.”

Emily shrugged and turned away, picking her dirty clothes from the dresser. “I’m going to brush my teeth, unless you need the bathroom?”

She fell in love with JJ, over the next few years. Somewhere in between girls’ nights and jet rides and paperwork and cases, she looked up and went ‘well, fuck. I’m in too deep.’ The lucky part was that it turned out JJ had done the same thing.

It wasn’t the first time she’d spent the night—they had a routine by now, practically. Emily had a _drawer_. Henry had a favorite story for her to read him. (Notably _not_ his favorite from his mom, which made very little sense to Emily, but she’d never had anyone telling her bedtime stories so who was she to speak on the matter.)

He’d fallen asleep around an hour ago, and it had taken her nearly fifteen minutes to figure out how to detangle them without waking him up. (JJ had just watched, smirking, because she was a horrible girlfriend with no sense of compassion.)

Now she was tangled with JJ, and her mind was drifting back to the places she had come over to avoid.

(And wasn’t that something, that she had a safe place here, a place that she thought her nightmares couldn’t reach. Emily wasn’t sure if she’d have believed it herself, if you’d told her a year ago.)

JJ had her head rested on Emily’s shoulder, tipped down in a way that made her expression hard to read. Her fingers traced nonsensical patterns over Emily’s bare stomach, and she closed her eyes, trying to ground herself in the sensation.

And JJ’s fingers brushed over the right side of her chest, just under her breast, and for a moment— _Ian’s hand splayed out flat over her chest_ —and Emily flinched away from the feeling.

JJ noticed. 

Emily held her eyes closed as she drew back, fingers first, then the weight of her head disappearing, her hair shifting on Emily’s neck and shoulder. 

“Hey, what’s up?” A pause. The slight rustle of hair. “Em, honey, what’s wrong?”

Emily opened her eyes, meeting JJ’s concerned gaze. She swallowed, but no words came to mind. She couldn’t find the lies.

JJ bit her lip. “Emily, who’s Lauren?”

“My—“ _ex-girlfriend. We were young, and so we made some terrible life choices together._ Emily noted her breath speeding up distantly, pulling her limbs in and away from JJ. She couldn’t do it again. She couldn’t tell the same lie because JJ wasn’t Doyle, couldn’t be Doyle, she couldn’t”t let this relationship be like that one, she couldn’t, she couldn’t breathe, she—

“Emily. Emily, look at me.” JJ’s commanding tone cut through the fog overtaking her.

Her eyes were so blue.

“Emily, I need you to take a deep breath. Breathe in.”

Her body started obeying almost on autopilot, despite the feeling not fading. 

“Good job. You just keep breathing like that and I’m going to go grab some water from the sink, okay? You gonna be okay?”

Emily nodded, watching her peel out of the bed. She tracked JJ as she disappeared into the bathroom, one hand pressed against the warm indent she’d left.

_Breathe, Prentiss._

She sucked another breath in, trying to put herself back into the rhythm JJ had established. The pounding of her heart began to fade out of her ears as JJ came back.

“Hey, babe,” she murmured, kneeling beside the bed, holding the cup out towards Emily. “You scared me a little bit there. You wanna talk about or do you just wanna tell me how to find Lauren so I can kill her?”

Emily laughed raggedly at the absurdity, pushing herself up on the bed. “No, uh, no. Lauren Reynolds is dead.”

JJ sucked a breath in through her teeth as Emily took the cup from her. 

She took a small sip and continued, a tiny smile still playing at her lips from the surreal suggestion, “Car accident. Years ago.”

She swallowed and took another, deciding to just do it before she could chicken out. “They needed to kill off my cover so the target wouldn’t come after me.”

Which was about when JJ started choking. 

“…Babe? Sorry, but when the _fuck_ did this happen?”

Most tattoo artists didn’t do names. Especially the names of partners. She couldn’t remember where she learned it—some case or Reid or wherever else—but she did remember that it was because it had been correlated with abusive relationships. 

Wherever it came from, the thought spoiled the idea of getting JJ’s name on her. When she had gotten the coverup tattoo—which had, funnily enough, stopped the scar from hurting—she had stayed true to her word. A blackbird would be too much JJ’s, and not enough her own.

She’d gotten a crescent moon instead—waxing, in her head at least, though she honestly hadn’t bothered to do any research into the matter. It was simple, but it was also the right size and the right symbolism, so it was enough.

This time, though, she wanted to say ‘JJ.’ 

(Emily hoped her team would catch Doyle, hoped that someday soon she would be able to go home again, but she missed them. She missed JJ, and Henry, and having her side of the bed and her seat at the breakfast table and kisses behind the blinds of JJ’s office. 

She needed a way to hold on to it all, just a little longer.

And when she came home, she knew she wouldn’t regret having ‘I love you,’ written right there on her skin.)

It wasn’t exactly hard to figure it out, once she got to thinking.

Really, the harder part was finding another tattoo parlor in Paris that she liked the work from.

(A blackbird, right on her wrist. Her watches usually hid it.

JJ took to running her thumb there, after Emily came home. She started wearing her watch on the other wrist.

Just another way to say, _I love you._ )

**Author's Note:**

> Thank y’all for reading! Comments/kudos/etc welcome
> 
> The asks:  
> https://top-jj-rights.tumblr.com/post/634085784199266304/so-emily-canonically-has-two-tattoos-at-least  
> https://top-jj-rights.tumblr.com/post/634086606882635777/ur-emily-tattoos-headcanon-is-so-beautiful-does  
> https://top-jj-rights.tumblr.com/post/634089285999525889/wait-ok-but-the-first-time-jj-asks-abt-the-lauren


End file.
